


Slip

by herbailiwick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 00:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>safiyabat prompted: "Anna, Sam, 'Free to Be You and Me.'"</p><p>More episodes are touched on than just 5x03.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Safiyabat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/gifts).



"Get away from me!" she said, voice rising in pitch, wavering.

"Relax."

She swallowed, backing up another half step until she was flat against the brick wall of the building. There was absolutely no way she was supposed to be talking to Lucifer. A while back, maybe that would have worked. Two angels, fallen by choice, interested in a life outside of Heaven's limitations.

"He likes you. I've seen it. He _trust_ you. He thinks you have something in common. He's wrong, of course. But, they often are."

She trembled slightly. An archangel, the most unpredictable, scorned archangel, and her blade wouldn't cut it, quite literally would not cut it. She'd broken out of angel obedience school only to be fried up against a wall.

"Talk to him for me. Intervene."

"Last I checked," she snarked, swallowing, trying to maintain her voice, "you weren't exactly clean of pride. You managed to get one vessel, all on your own. But you think Sam's special."

Lucifer tilted his head. "Of course. And you do too. You're one of the few angels around who understands that. Anna. _Sister_. You don't think I know a rebel when I see one?" He reached out, cupping her cheek with a firm and artful carefulness that reminded her of the art he'd made that was on display in Heaven, the music he'd composed.

"They haven't cracked you yet. Come with me. Don't let them. You can be in a place of power."

She eyed Lucifer's wrist, all the way up his sleeve, to his shoulder, his new face. "Power to do what?" 

He stroked her cheek gently, then let go, taking a step back. "Once I join with Sam Winchester, the world will be my oyster. And yours too."

Her gaze grew cold. He could talk about his love for the Earth all he wanted, he could say to her that his plan wasn't to rid it of all humanity. But she knew. Her gut told her no.  


"You know, maybe I should have waited til they were done with their little mind games," he said softly, his tone like brittle rock covering a flow of magma. "Maybe a broken Anna would have served my purpose. I mean, I do outrank you. And I _did_ let you out."

She stared. Her eyes grew wide, and she searched him for insincerity. She found none, but she doubted her findings. Since she'd started doubting, she doubted a lot.

"Let me out so you could make me talk to Sam for you, exchanging one set of shackles for another? Afraid he won't give you a chance?"

"I'm the Devil," Lucifer said, raising a brow. "So...no, he wouldn't give me a chance, but I'm not afraid. Castiel won't help me because he's sadly anti-apocalypse now, so that leaves you, on the Sam front. And if I've gotta face Michael, I need my true vessel. All you have to do is get him to meet you somewhere."

"If you can't convince your vessel to let you find him, I'm certainly not going to help." 

Anna flew away, and sighed in relief after a few hours without any indication she was being followed.

***

She wasn't sent back that day, nor the next. After a week, she relaxed a little, but knew the freedom was likely to come to a crunching end. Lucifer wasn't exactly known for being merciful, or for leaving loose ends.

When she tried to appear to Sam in a dream, he was dreaming about his girlfriend who had been killed, Jessica Moore. The two of them were sitting on a blanket on a grassy hill, watching a play performance. 

"Boo," came a voice in her ear, a hand on her shoulder. She shrieked.

"You're lucky I anticipated that," Lucifer said, sitting next to her, letting go easily. "I kept him from hearing us. First time in someone's dreams?"

"In a long time, anyway," she admitted. 

"It doesn't make sense," Lucifer pointed out. "She's been dead since 2005, but look at where his mind goes when he sleeps."

"You don't have enough humanity left to understand." Anna nodded to the stage. "You play a role, Lucifer. I don't think you feel it. Even about Gabriel, about Michael, I don't think you feel it."

His cool expression melted away unevenly. "Gabriel. Have you seen him?"

Anna left the dream, but Lucifer was with her in her motel room a moment later. "Anna. Is Gabriel okay?"

"I heard that he's been on Earth for a long time," she admitted carefully. "I haven't seen him for myself, though. He doesn't know who I am."

"What's he been doing?"

Anna shrugged. "I don't know."

"I'm meeting with Sam in his dreams tomorrow. I can try it first, like you suggested  And then, Anna, you either help me, or you go back home."

Anna fled far from the motel room, trying to leave faint traces of Grace all across the globe. Trying to deceive the master of deception seemed a little futile, but she had to try.

***

"How do you have my number?"

She raised an eyebrow, though he certainly couldn't see it. 

"Um. Angel, Sam," she said.

"Right," he replied. "Uh. So...? Was there...something?"

She didn't feel like doing anything but getting straight to the point. "Lucifer's desperate, Sam." She paused. She could hear his breathing, but he made no reply. "He'll do anything in his power to get you to say yes."

"I," he paused, something at the tip of his tongue. Maybe he'd offer her some insight into his harsh, conflicted human emotions. Maybe he would request her help, or her guidance.

"I know," he said. 

"Well, you don't have to let him," Anna said.

***

By the next evening, the Winchesters were together. They were back home in their Impala. Anna was back home too, her mind straining between obeying Heaven and paving her own way, between order and freedom and that road that lay between them, winding and new.

And in the end, she met Sam again, when her own way wasn't soft anymore. She wasn't ready to be reasoned with, or to doubt, not anymore.

She didn't tiptoe through dreams.

Instead, she fell through time, and she'd fought a pregnant woman, and greater good had became a looming presence.

And she died at the hands of the archangel she never imagined would be the one to snuff out her immortal light.

And as she did, she spared one last thought for Sam Winchester, the vessel who'd fallen through her fingers and into the hands of the Devil because of incompetence, because of tiptoeing through dreams. She hadn't been quick enough with the metaphorical trigger.

She'd failed the angels like Castiel had, and failed Sam like the other angels had, like they would continue to.

And, somehow the worst part of it all, to Sam, as he thought about it later, was that somehow she'd managed to lose herself.

Maybe with a little more time, they could have turned things around. Maybe they could have saved Anna. Sam definitely thought she'd been worth saving.

But Cas had come back, right? So maybe Anna would come back, someday. Maybe someday she'd stand up to Heaven again, right by their side, and she'd be free again.


End file.
